As if Bush disingenuously calling for a "time horizon" for withdrawal wasn't enough for the GOP's daily series of flip-flops and contradictions, now John McCain thinks we will see "spectacular terrorist attempts made in the wake of what he has referred to as the "success of the Surge." Given that McCain has asserted that Al Qaeda has been defeated, sectarian violence has ended, and political reconciliation has been achieved, it's unclear how he thinks terrorists in Iraq could also have the capacity for multiple "spectacular" attacks, though I'm guessing it has something to do with his equally contradictory insistence that sixteen months is too soon to bring American soldiers home.
Channeling his inner Cheney, John McCain asserted:
"I predict that they will make an attempt as we get in to the election season to make more of these spectacular kinds of attacks which they're still capable of doing. The suicide bombers, et cetera, would not surprise me and we've already found out that they're going to try and step up their attacks and try and do things in a more spectacular fashion so that they can erode the support of the Maliki government."
This comes one day after John McCain made the following claim aboard the Apparently-Not-So-Straight Talk Express:
"I repeat my statement that we have succeeded in Iraq. Not 'We are succeeding.' We have succeeded in Iraq."
Now, in case there's any confusion, John McCain wants to make this absolutely clear: We aren't succeeding, we have succeeded. That is to say, the conflict in Iraq should be discussed in the past tense. It's over. We're done. We won. Woo hoo!
But given that we're now facing "spectacular" activity from "suicide bombers, et cetera," I guess that means John McCain's statement about success didn't mean what we all initially thought it meant.
So, if we haven't succeeded at stabilizing Iraq and eliminating "the terrorist threat," what have we succeeded at? What's the new definition of success?
Even by the White House's own twisted, ever-evolving standards of political success, we haven't arrived at an oil revenue deal nor have we disarmed anti-government Sunni militias. In fact, the modified strategy implemented after the initial failure of the surge has merely promoted tribalism and severely crippled the prospect of a unified Iraq free from sectarian conflict. And now, according to John McCain, we can't even claim to have eliminated the capabilities of suicide bombers.
So in what sense have we succeeded? Given that McCain is basing his entire campaign on Iraq, I think voters have a right to know what constitutes the GOP's new definition of success. If it's not a stable and unified Iraq, what is success?
For now, McCain doesn't seem inclined to volunteer a coherent answer. Sadly, it looks like the conventional media is even less inclined to demand one.